Is Intel's Struggle a Sign That OKRs Are Ineffective?

Question

Intel has been under-performing in recent years, missing out on major trends like mobile and GPUs/Machine Learning. Given that the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodology was pioneered at Intel, could their current struggles suggest that OKRs might not be as effective as believed? Are OKRs causing companies to micro-optimize and reach local maxima rather than driving true innovation? Or Intel failure have nothing to do with OKR?Would love to hear experiences and thoughts from others who have used OKRs in their organizations or if I&acute;m just too grumpy about OKR.

jqpabc123 · Accepted Answer

American business culture is pro management and sales/marketing and anti engineering and labor/production.
The best evidence for this is the outrageous and unjustifiable growth of management compensation that has been on-going for decades.
In a nutshell, management and marketing are assets to be nurtured. Engineering and labor are counterproductive expenses to be restrained and controlled.
Most egregious of all is the fact that this attitude extends to companies fundamentally built around engineering and production --- like Intel and Boeing.

JohnFen · Answer

Based on my experience working at Intel (a long while ago now, during the BK days, but even then the trajectory was obvious), I don't think OKRs are the root cause here. Like all such management strategies, OKR can be done well, where it's a benefit all around, or badly, where it's the opposite. I didn't have a poor experience with how Intel did it.
I think Intel's problems boil down to a combination of them not being able to adapt to a market that was changing faster than they can, of bad bets they made resulting from them not understanding the new world they found themselves in, and just plain poor management.
I also see a parallel with Intel and Boeing, in the sense that Intel upper management shifted away from prioritizing good engineering.